“Not until today. Why?”

She let out a long sigh. “I’m assuming you have a copy of the Escape Velocity magazine with his story in it, right?”

“I do.”

“Good, then it won’t come as a shock to you to know that my Squire just left and she’s heading over to your house to have a talk with Jeff. If I were you – ”

“Say no more. He’s leaving the country even as we speak. Thanks for the call, Eph.”

“No problem, amigo.”

Hanging up the phone, he narrowed his eyes on Jeff. “That was Ephani warning me that you’re about twenty minutes from dying.”

Jeff’s face turned stone white. “What?”

He nodded. “Her Squire, Celena, Ms. Blood Rite, I-kill-anything-that-breaks-formation, is on her way over here to have a word with you. Since Celena isn’t real big on conversation, I’m taking that as a euphemism for ‘kick your ass.’ ”

Rafael paused as those words conjured one hell of an image in his mind – Celena kicking his ass in that pair of stiletto corset boots she often wore. And in his mind she was wearing nothing but a thong… Yeah… that was something he definitely wouldn’t mind.

A native of Trinidad, Celena had the most perfect mocha complexion he’d ever seen. It was so smooth and inviting that it begged a man to taste it.

And her lips…

Angelina Jolie had nothing on her. She moved slow and seductive like a cat and he’d spent more than his fair share of time wanting her to rub that lean, curvy body of hers up against his.

But unfortunately, she was a Squire and he was a Dark-Hunter. By the rules of their world, she was off limits to him, and though Rafael didn’t give two shits about most rules, Celena lived for them.

It was a crime against nature in his opinion that a woman that fine couldn’t be corrupted.

“What do I do?” Jeff asked.

“Well, not to insult a man who looks like a rocket scientist in comparison to you, but… run, Forrest, run.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a new era where – ”

“Do you really want to argue that point while someone, who is only a few minutes away, is speeding over here to most likely kill you?”

Jeff paused for a single heartbeat before common sense finally seized him. “Where should I hide?”

If it wasn’t for the fact that as a Dark-Hunter Rafael was impervious to illness, he’d swear a migraine was starting right behind his left eye. “Get to the basement and hide there. Don’t make a peep and don’t leave until I tell you it’s safe.”

Jeff nodded before he ran for the door. Two seconds later he was back. Rafael watched him with a frown as he searched around the room until he located the baseball bat he’d used yesterday at the batting cages. He picked it up and cradled it to his chest before he headed back toward the basement.

“What are you doing?” Rafael asked.

“Protection.”

Yeah, right. Celena was highly trained and deadly. A whack with the bat would only piss her off an instant before she jerked it out of Jeff’s hands and beat him with it, but far be it from him to tell Gomer that.

“Hide well,” Rafael said, exaggerating his voice.

Jeff nodded again before he dashed down to where Rafael’s bedroom and living area were.

Pressing the heel of his hand against his brow where the imagined pain seemed to be located, Rafael glanced around the parlor of his Victorian house to make sure that Jeff hadn’t left anything like his underwear lying about. The boy was a good Squire in that he kept up the appearance that someone lived in the house who actually aged but seriously sucked when it came to general housekeeping.

At least for once the place was decent. Except for the Xbox that Jeff had left stretched from the plasma TV to the leather sofa. Rafael had just turned the game off and put it away when he heard a fierce knock on his front door.

Rafael straightened his shirt before he sauntered over to answer it. He could already see Celena’s curvy outline though the frosting on the glass. The porch light highlighted her medium brown hair that she wore pulled back from her face to trail in a ponytail of small braids from the crown of her head.

Her lips were perfect and outlined in dark red glossy lipstick. She had catlike almond-shaped eyes and an attractive mole right above the left arch of those lips.

Damn, she was the finest-looking woman he’d ever seen. Opening the door, he gave her the sexiest smile he could. “Hi, Celena.”

But she was all business. Her dark brown eyes didn’t even glance his way. They went straight past him, into the house.

“Where’s Jeff?”

“Don’t know.”

That finally succeeded in getting her to look at him, but then she quickly glanced away and continued to search the house with her gaze. “What do you mean, you don’t know? After dark, a Dark-Hunter is always supposed to know the whereabouts of his or her Squire.”

“Ah, c’mon,” he teased. “You don’t really tell Ephani every place you go after dark, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

She tried to step past him, but he quickly blocked her way and kept her outside on the porch.

“So what do you want with Jeff?” he asked in a nonchalant tone.

“That’s Squires’ business.”

“Really? I thought anything that concerned a Hunter’s Squire also concerned the Hunter, since he’s my partner, in a purely platonic sense.”

The edges of her lips twitched as if she found something funny about his words.

He couldn’t explain it, but he really wanted to see a full-blown smile from this woman. “What?”

One corner of her mouth lifted into an attractive grin, but it still wasn’t the smile he wanted to see from her. The kind that would light up her eyes and make her laugh. “I was just thinking about Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash – the pirate’s credo.”

He laughed at that even though he should have been offended. “Jeff is too hairy for my tastes. I much prefer a woman’s smooth skin… the softness of a female body. I never was one to cuddle a porcupine.”

Celena swallowed at the seductive tone in Rafael’s deep voice. The sound of it had always reminded her of James Earl Jones, except Rafael’s was marked by a heavy Brazilian accent. One that sent a chill down her spine.

She knew she had no business even looking at him with anything remotely similar to lust, and yet the man set her hormones on fire. Especially that wicked scent of masculine power tinged with Brut aftershave. It was a deadly combination.

Not to mention the fact that he was wearing a tight black V-neck sweater that only emphasized how perfectly formed he was. It clung to every dip and bulge of the muscles on his body. How was a woman supposed to keep her mind straight when a man like this was in front of her?

Clearing her throat, she forced her thoughts back to business. “Where is he?”

A devilish glint taunted her from the midnight depths of his eyes. “Tell me what you want with him and I might tell you where he is.”

Narrowing her gaze, she found it difficult to maintain her outraged anger while he looked at her with that playful air. And that seriously annoyed her. “I’m here to take him into custody and deliver him to the Council.”

“Well, that sucks.” Even though his tone was sincere, she could tell he was mocking the Council and their orders. “Bank robbery, handing out the passwords for the Dark-Hunter Web site, carjacking, mugging, cats mixing with dogs, and now this… writing a short story. High crimes all. You get the rope and we’ll hang him for it. God forbid the whole twelve subscribers of that magazine should actually read a fictional story and think it real.”

She glared at him. How dare he make light of this. “It has a substantial readership.”

“And Jeff used a pseudonym for not only us but himself as well. As the kid says, what better place to hide than under people’s noses?” Even as he said that, he couldn’t believe he was backing Jeff’s story. But then that was what friends should do for each other. “It’s nothing to worry over.”

“Nothing?” Celena was aghast at his light tone. How could he write this off as if it were nothing more than a simple hangnail that bothered them? “He’s exposed us.”

“No, Talon getting filmed in the middle of a hissy fit in New Orleans exposed us. Zarek getting caught on tape exposed us. This is minor. I mean, damn, Acheron was able to cover up all the others with little incidence. This, too, shall pass.”

Not bloody likely. “This is entirely different.”

“I agree. Jeff is mortal and only has a handful of years left to him, whereas Talon and Zarek have an eternity to continue being stupid. Let’s not shorten the kid’s life any more than we have to, shall we?”

He did have a point, but she hated to admit that. Besides, that didn’t matter. She was here to do her job. Rafael didn’t control her. She was a representative of the Council. “What happens to him isn’t my decision. It’s the Council’s. I’m merely here to collect him.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“He’s only two years younger than I am and he’s certainly old enough to know to keep his mouth shut.”

“Haven’t you ever done something you knew you shouldn’t and then regretted it?”

She didn’t hesitate with her answer. “No.”

“No?” he asked incredulously. “You’ve never once broken a rule, lied, or got away with anything?”

“Only once in junior high when my sister came home late, because I didn’t want to get her into trouble. Then one week later, she did it again and was injured in a car wreck, trying to get home before dawn, which taught me the value of lying to help someone. Since then I’ve never told another one and I don’t intend to start now. I have integrity.”

“Wow. You have one boring life.”